While the author was hoisted on board the Queen of Portugal bound for Lisbon in June 1754, he had a small desire to survive the milder Portuguese winter.Fielding was dying from different kinds of disorders, and the weight of his sickness sets up the adventurous humour and tragedy of the journal. In this essay, Fielding examines his body's decay and the corruption of English society, destroying with irony his own high claims for former conduct as a London magistrate. He has described the daily events of the difficult journey, the abuses faced by the sailors, the dedication of his wife and daughter, the terror of cyclones, the sunset and the moonrise at sea, and the description of his food and drink.Tom Keymer gives an enlightening introduction to this volume, which finally gets popular and is available in a scholarly edition of the journal.
Henry Fielding was born on April 22, 1707, in Sharpham Park, Somerset, England. He was a British novelist and playwright. Henry went to Eton College; he left early and lost his family's support. All his 25 plays were written at an early age. He wrote Shamela in 1741, a burlesque of Samuel Richardson's Pamela that he never claimed. In the entertaining and unique work of Joseph Andrews (1742), he wrote Richardson's novel in a sarcastic way. Tom Jones (1749), his most famous book, is also noted for its incredible comic enthusiasm, a huge number of characters, and differentiated scenes of high and low life. The More Sober Amelia (1751) assumes the Victorian domestic novel. In these works, he expands the English novel as a planned, realistic narrative genre, reviewing contemporary society.
